How Many Keys are Needed

[Paul Stevens]

Denise and Slide are having great troubles with CSB over
in the DM Forum. They commonly complain that they
run out of keys. This made me wonder..........

How many keys are needed to finish CSB. The bug in
the Corbum Column room means you don't need the
KU Key. So that is three. I alway get the four Keys of B
because that is easy and gets me past the Demons on my
way to the Ful Ya Pit. But it is not necessary.

What is the minimum number? What if you use the
Lock Picks? Does it make a difference? Do you only need the
three (Emerald, Ruby, and Turquoise)? No. I think you need an
Onyx to get the Ruby.

So .... how many with the Picks and how many without? If a key
can be used twice, count it as one key.

[Antman]

5 i believe, Emerald, Turquiose, Ruby, Onyx and Winged. You can get into Chaos's room behind the master key door if a teleporter appears some in level 0. So it's only 5 keys.
Infact the only items you even need to touch are the orange gem, 2 torches, green gem, 4 corbums, Chest (with ruby key inside). Two of these items are needed to activate pressure pads in the DDD later on. Also, in Dain i THINK you need to pick up and put down the vorpal blade to open the wall revealing the onyx key door, i always do in my speed games....but do you have to?
So, including the vorpal blade and the keys, only 14 items are actually needed to win the game. But getting that teleporter to appear in the right place on level 0 in basically impossible so you really need a master key aswell. Thats means you would have to kill monsters, either the demon or two vexirks. The only other monsters would be the coatl and two black flames at DAIN, the skeleton in NETA and a demon in ROS.

I wonder if a game like this is actually possible? It would be next to impossible.....maybe i'll try it sometime.

[Antman]

Hmmmm, maybe doing KU instead of ROS you would need less keys, like only 3. But more items and monsters would need to be killed and used, like the power towers and Mongor, maybe that's all....so infact KU would need less equipment than ROS, interesting.

[Paul Stevens]

The teleporter into Chaos' area does not look too
difficult. The monster generator has a 6 minute timeout
so you want to visit level 0 several times over a long
period. The worm has greater than one chance in six
plus one chance in eighteen
of activating the teleporter. So if you create 10 worms
over an hour the chance is greater than 91
percent that the teleporter will be active.
1 - (1-1/6-1/ 18 )**10.

Of course you will have to deal with all the worms. But you
can go check the teleporter and deal with the worms
one at a time.

Edit: I had to edit because my formula turned into a smiley!

[Antman]

Revisiting this after 17 years, the latest in CSB research shows that only 3 keys are actually required

In fact, I'm fairly sure there is actually a way to complete the game with 8 items in the 'minimal moves' competition different to the 8 items I used in the original recording as you can replace one of the keys with another item. Theoretically anyway, I haven't actually tried. Can anyone guess which item is switched with which?

[Ameena]

I'm guessing it's not as obvious as swapping a key for the lockpicks .

[Paul Stevens]

I've given it some thought and studied the maps. I studied all the doors
that seem to need opening. But I give up for now.
Give us a week or so to cogitate before you provide any hints.

[Antman]

Nope not the lockpicks

[Antman]

I retract my previous statement, you do need 4 keys. The winged key can be skipped but you need the boots of speed, I thought the boots of speed could be retrieved via the teleporter at 07(14,33) to 02(14,20). But it turns out this never actually works as the teleporter is turned off too fast and the item ends up reaching the teleporter at 07(14,26) instead, which seems like a bug in the original dungeon design. All other teleporter locations require a key to get the boots. So there are multiple ways of using 4 keys, but not 3 unfortunately unless I'm missing something.